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Cropping and docking part 2: Docking

Yesterday we looked at cropping (ears). As you may have seen from the comments, there’s a much stronger feeling against cropping than there is against docking.

This is really interesting, considering that docking actually removes more tissue, bone, and of course a whole bunch of the dog’s spinal cord; cropping just removes skin (and tissue and nerves and so on). Please don’t think I’m minimizing cropping; but in terms of physical trauma there’s no contest.

The reason, I think, that we tend to accept docking much more easily and even anti-cropping people will still dock their puppies is simply because it happens so early.

Docking is typically done when the puppies are just a few days old. Some breeders bring the puppies to the vet but most experienced breeders will dock the puppies themselves. This is done for the same reason that private croppers do ears – because very few vets are as much an expert on the breed as the breeder is, and experienced breeders are MUCH better than their vets at predicting growth. Several breeds are flattered most by tails that relate to the size of the adult dog – for example, that the tail end as high as the head, or in a specific proportion of the height of the dog. I was once in on a discussion of poodle tail length and it was like listening to an algebra class – the length of the tail and the size and shape of the tail pom in proportion to the dog’s body length, height, the rest of the groom, etc. is considered vital not just to the look of the dog but to the entire type and “poodliness” of the dog. It takes an experienced breeder to translate the fractions of an inch of a newborn puppy to the size and shape of the adult dog and to adjust each tail a centimeter up or down to meet the size and shape of the eventual dog.

Another reason breeders usually dock tails themselves is that even if the tail doesn’t relate to the size of the adult dog, tails in the show ring go through fads and fashions in the same way that grooming or markings do. These differences are usually completely invisible to a layperson but to breeders they are like a neon sign. A breeder can say that tails seem to be a half-inch longer or shorter this year and adjust the docking to meet this.

Vets usually dock tails surgically – by cutting. Depending on the breed a suture is placed in the end of the tail or it is glued or it is just left alone. Breeders who dock generally either tie off the tail (put a length of suture material or string or elastic or dental floss, depending on what they prefer, around the tail and then tying it tightly to cut off circulation to the tail) or band the tail (use a very strong, tight rubber band and an elastrator tool). Some cut the tails, others crush and twist them off; there are as many methods (and people firmly devoted to theirs as best) as there are breeders.

So WHY is this “no big deal”? I would imagine that if you were walking your adult Irish Setter around and someone walked over and cut off his tail (an inch from his anus) with a branch lopper, you would not think it was a minor event. But we’ve all bought the idea that it doesn’t matter because we’re cutting off such a little teeny thing.

Ask breeders who dock tails how they justify doing something so traumatic to the dog, and you will invariably get the same response: it doesn’t hurt them. The puppy’s nervous system is too immature to feel pain. The puppies barely squeak. They nurse and go to sleep right away. It’s over in a second. They will either follow this or preface it by saying that it’s in the standard, it’s the historical look of the dog, the dog just looks better this way, I love the little bunny butt, and so on.

I think that in addressing this we have to leave the aesthetics alone for a while, because they’re very much an individual thing. Some people think no tails are adorable, and it’s not like I can say “No they’re not!” Even if I believed that, appearance is pretty much by definition an “eye of the beholder” quality.

And I think that most people would agree that aesthetics only get to rule in a situation where there is no harm either way. I think short hair is attractive, I cut it. I think no nose is attractive, people would get a lot more heated about that.

Unless, of course, everyone thought that removing the nose was painless and harmless as long as you did it before the baby was a week old.

That’s pretty much exactly where we are in dogs. We may not like the idea of docking on a philosophical level, but we’re not going to make a big deal about it, because it “doesn’t hurt.”

Well, this is very tragically wrong.

Let’s look at the evidence for “it doesn’t hurt” one piece at a time. If you need specific studies referenced, let me know and I’ll give you my bibliography, but for the sake of time and flow I’m just going to write it out here. I promise that nothing I’m going to say is not backed up VERY CLEARLY by peer-reviewed studies.

1) The puppy’s nervous system is too immature to feel pain.

False. In fact, puppy pain response is so well established that it’s one of the tests used to determine whether the puppy is fit and vital. A study comparing traditional injectable, short-acting, and epidural anesthesia methods for performing c-sections on bitches demonstrated that short-acting was safer than injectable and epidural was safer than inhaled in no small part because the puppies’ PAIN RESPONSE was intact and immediate on the epidural bitches, acceptable in the short-acting-anesthesia bitches, and sluggish in the injectable-treated bitches.

Another argument is that the myelin around the puppies’ nerves is not fully developed, so they do not feel pain.

Again, this is false. This is the argument that subjected countless human babies to major surgeries without anesthesia, a practice that has (thankfully) ended now as we better understand the way nerves work. Myelin insulation makes the nerve impulses move faster, but its absence in no way prevents the animal, human or otherwise, from feeling pain. Human babies have pretty poor myelinization, but anybody who puts a baby into a bath that the baby thinks is too warm or too cool knows EXACTLY how well those skin receptors work. Even extremely premature human babies can feel and learn to anticipate heel sticks, which are not terribly traumatic.

Puppies know when they’re hot, cold, hungry, they know enough to want to put their heads up on something to feel more comfy when they sleep. An extremely light touch near a puppy’s nose will trigger rooting and sniffing. If they can feel when you move one of their whiskers, how on EARTH could they not feel it when you cut a third of their spinal cord off?

2) The puppy barely squeaks.

Again, this is no evidence. Vocalization is not just “I feel pain” or “I don’t feel pain.” Newborn animals, and this includes humans, will often react to pain by stopping a vocalization. When Zuzu fractured her skull, she barely cried. But there’s no way I’m going to say that based on that experience skull fractures don’t hurt. When the pain is sharp or shocking, baby animals will actually withdraw, quiet down, stop moving around, as their brains look for a way to deal with the pain and get comfort.

Which leads to

3) They nurse and go to sleep right away.

This is a CLASSIC example of a self-comforting behavior, a defense mechanism. Babies that are hurting nurse and sleep. An experienced mom can tell the difference between the frantic nursing of a hurt baby and the quiet and relaxed nursing of a content baby, but could you see that difference in a newborn puppy? I don’t think I could. But as an experienced human mom, I can tell you that the times that my kids have been in the most pain – Zuzu with her head, the time Tabitha fractured her tibia, and the time Honour put a tiny upholstery tack up her nose and the ER doc couldn’t get it and kept pushing and prying for over an hour and made her nose swell and bleed like bonkers (lesson to all moms: MAKE THEM PAGE THE ENT DOCTOR, who will get it out in less than two seconds), once the initial crying was over all three of them did nothing but nurse and sleep. They slept limp and hard; they were difficult to rouse. They slept on the x-ray table, every single one of them.

I tell those stories because I think the moms out there know this and recognize it in their own kids, not because I think dogs are humans. But can we generalize it to dogs? I think, demonstrably, yes. Many studies show that nursing and sleeping are a displacement mechanism across the animal kingdom, used as an adaptive behavior when the baby animal is in physical pain.

4) It’s over in a second.

This is the one that is the most poorly understood. We think that once the tail is gone, it’s gone. The pain is over.

But here’s the thing: You’ve removed a body part that is packed tight with nerves. When you cut those nerves, they do not just seal themselves off and sit there happily. They “know” where they’re supposed to go and how long they’re supposed to be, and when the cut ends try to heal they form massive, swollen tangles called neuromas. Neuromas are one of the causes of chronic amputated-limb pain in humans, and one of the reasons that many humans with amputations never really feel healed.

Neuromas have been studied pretty extensively in relation to the animals that are routinely killed within a few months of being docked – sheep (tails), pigs (tails) and chickens (beaks). In lambs, neuromas are found in the tail area even six months after docking (when the lambs are routinely slaughtered for food). In pigs, neuromas are present in the tail at full-market-weight slaughter. In chickens, neuromas are found when the chicken is a year and a half old, even though the beak was cut back when the chick was a day or two old. There are only a few small studies involving neuromas in docked dogs – because, of course, we don’t slaughter dogs – but the one study that examined three docked dogs euthanized for behavior problems found neuromas in the tail of all three, though they had been docked years before.

We can’t ask dogs whether they hurt. But we can say that we see neuromas associated with pain in humans, who can be asked, and we can say that docked dogs have neuromas that persist for years. Dogs are VERY stoic about pain, and they do not complain until the pain is pretty major. So while I’d never say that docked dogs remain in terrible pain forever, I think it’s quite plausible that they always have a bit of an ache, an itch, a twinge, far more often than we’d imagined.

So this is the situation. We have an aesthetic choice being made because it doesn’t hurt the dog. If we can demonstrate pretty clearly that it DOES hurt (and I think that’s inescapable) and there’s a strong possibility that it CONTINUES to hurt, at least a little, then how can we justify it?

This is where people start talking about the other reasons for docking, so let’s look at those:

5) Because it’s the historical appearance and meets the breed standards. And I agree with them! I am totally a traditionalist when it comes to purebred dog standards; I believe in them and I don’t want them changed for any but the most dire of reasons. I will defend the Pekingese club’s right to a short face until the day I die. But the standard MUST bend, I think it really must, when it comes to clear evidence of pain. You’ve GOT to rethink things when it’s not just the one in a hundred that hurts a leg because your breed is heavier than average, it’s 100 percent of your puppies having to be injured and then arguably feeling that injury for years to come.

In terms of historicity… that’s really a pretty poor argument. The dog must have existed before you started docking it, so (obviously) at one point, before it was docked, it was undocked. So not docking is earlier than docking. Going back to not docking is truer to the very earliest existence of the breed.

6) It prevents injuries in working dogs. This one is the argument I always cough into my hand at – to prevent injuries, we deliberately inflict an injury? And that’s OK? Carpenters usually have hands that look like they’re a complete mess, tons of cuts and scratches. Should we amputate their hands to prevent those injuries? This argument also falls on the grounds of the hundreds of thousands of working dogs who KEEP their tails – Border Collies, the livestock guardian dogs, Australian Cattle Dogs, Catahoulas, the list goes on and on. If tails are such a clear and present danger to the dog, then they should be gone on ALL dogs. The Border Collie people should be begging for vets to dock their dogs; the ACD breeders should have been yelling that their dogs’ tails are a liability in the stock pen. They’re not, so I have a bit of a problem with the idea that having a tail on an Australian Shepherd is really going to make it an unfit herding dog.

7) If you don’t dock, the dog gets caked with feces. OH MAN DO I LOVE THIS ONE. You hear it over and over and over again. It’s absolutely ridiculous immediately and it gets more ridiculous the longer you think about it. First, GROOM YOUR DOG. Any owner who lets his dog’s hind end get caked with poop has far greater issues than a tail removal would solve. Second, if Old English Sheepdogs are supposedly going to be walking around with three pounds of feces on their tails, where on earth is the Briard? Drowning under his own poo? And yet Briards get to keep their tails, but OES are supposedly super unhygienic if they have more than a single vertebra left. Third, GROOM YOUR DOG. Fourth, Yorkies would, according to one person I read, lose their current national popularity if they had tails, because they’d all be full of fecal material all the time. Oh, you’re RIGHT! That’s why Shih Tzus are so far down the list… at number 10. And that’s why Shih Tzus have rocketed up from number 23 ten years ago. And that’s why the -doodles and -poos are so universally hated… Oh, wait, what was your point? Hmmm, not really getting it. Fifth, GROOM YOUR DOG.

8 ) I’m going to close with one that was so gloriously crazy that it HAD to come from a Rottie breeder (and it did – now I love all you Rottie people, and I adore your breed, but right now a whole bunch of your club has their heads so far up where the sun don’t shine that it’s shocking they can appear in public): If Rotties had tails, they wouldn’t be able to trot anymore. The heavy tail would destroy the dog’s center of gravity and breeders would have to breed a super long, low croup because that’s the only way to hold up this heavy, long, did I mention heavy tail. The dog’s topline would get longer and longer and longer to support the long croup that has that elephantine tail behind it, and before you know it the dog can barely move.

Number one, somebody’s got a serious case of tail envy. I have never, ever in my life seen a dog’s tail that would actually be unsupportable by normal dog anatomy, but I guess in this breeder’s mind Rotties are the Dirk Diggler of tail growers, the five-legged wonders who can barely stand up under the weight of twelve more inches of tail.

Number two, if you have a tailed breed, don’t you feel kind of insulted by this? That the Rottie is the only true “endurance trotter” and the key to endurance is no tail? All you with undocked Pointers, with Goldens, with Danes, Beardies, Cattle Dogs? Did you realize that your dogs don’t have endurance? Oh, yeah, you German Shepherd breeders, did you realize that your dogs can’t trot?

That’s entirely too snarky a note to end this on, so let me just say this: We have to know where our preferences can and cannot rule. We have to draw a line beyond which we are no longer doing things in the best interests of our dogs. This has nothing to do with animal rights; it has nothing to do with being liberal or conservative; it has nothing to do with wanting to change breed standards to conform to some kind of “new” rule. This is one hundred percent about loving dogs. It’s about remembering that the dogs didn’t ask to be born and didn’t ask to live with us. We are living out our desires by producing, owning, training, showing, and manipulating dogs. That’s a high and sacred thing, and I can think of no better way to spend far too much time and money, but we have to know where our wish-fulfillment reduces quality of life for the dog.

I would strongly argue that docking and cropping are doing nothing for the dogs and they’re causing harm; they are not necessary to the proper production of the dog as a breed; and for all those reasons they are ripe to be discarded.

20 thoughts on “Cropping and docking part 2: Docking”

Joanna, do you happen to have any information at your fingertips about the impact of tail docking on the dog’s body in motion? I watch my dogs running and jumping and doing their thing and they use their tails a great deal. I’m curious what kind of effect docking has on their movement and whether it’s been studied.

Nobody really knows. It’s something that’s never been studied. The only thing I have is anecdotal evidence from breeders in the docking-ban countries, who say that the undocked puppies seem to be up on their feet earlier and that they see that their dogs DO use the tail in motion and during work (i.e., the body didn’t “forget” how to use the tail to balance and run and jump, despite how many generations in a row did not have their tails).

Hi Joanna – this is my first comment here, and I first want to say how much I really enjoy reading your blog! So much of it really resonates with me in the “Oh, so THAT’s why….” sense. My question is, do you know of any evidence of abnormalities in undocked tails of breeds where many individuals have natural short or bob tails? When my family got our current dog, an Australian Shepherd, we asked the breeder when we went onto her waiting list if she would leave our puppy’s tail undocked (our previous Aussie was a rescue and did have his tail, and we felt it would be kinder to not dock as we were just looking for a pet). Of course she explained to us that it wouldn’t be possible because by the time she knew which puppy would be ours, it was long past docking time, but she also said that she always docks tails because in breeds where the tail is “meant” to be short, tails left on can develop spinal abnormalities and be health risks to the dog. We bought the story at the time because our previous Aussie DID have problems with his tail (extreme sensitivity to touch and a sore that had difficulty healing, but maybe just due to not-so-great vet advice now that I look back). Now, with an undergraduate biology degree and half a Ph.D. behind me, I’m pretty skeptical about that reasoning. The only thing I can think of is that if tails are removed for generations, genetic abormalities that WOULD have developed are never seen and cannot be watched for and selected against. What do you think? Have you heard any evidence of this?

Hi Joanna,
I reared an Aussie puppy for a friend from one of the first undocked litters in the UK. She is a natural bobtail with a half tail, and when she was born it was all coiled around itself like a pig’s. As she grew up the tail gradually straightened out, until it looked more or less normal at 8 weeks when I picked her up from her breeder.

I am not an expert, but I believe a half-tail with a kink is actually a variation on a normal tail, and is not the result of a genetically bobbed tail. I’ve seen a couple of Cardis with tails like that.

Thanks for these posts. My childhood Rottie was undocked, and she had such a pretty sickle tail. I don’t think it ruined her look or movement at all, and I honestly think most other pet owners wouldn’t really care either one way or another.

But I can also understand falling in love with the ‘look’ of a cropped and docked breed, and feeling that losing that look would be losing something important to the breed. I didn’t know that docking could cause lifelong pain, though, so now I’m more conflicted over the issue than I was before.

Thanks for these posts. My childhood Rottie was undocked, and she had such a pretty sickle tail. I don’t think it ruined her look or movement at all, and I honestly think most other pet owners wouldn’t really care either one way or another.

But I can also understand falling in love with the ‘look’ of a cropped and docked breed, and feeling that losing that look would be losing something important to the breed. I didn’t know that docking could cause lifelong pain, though, so now I’m more conflicted over the issue than I was before.

(Off-topic: Have you seen this new ‘ethical breeder’ magazine that’s coming out? I thought it might be something you’d be interested in: tinyurl.com/K9Magazine)

Having many friends with pointing breeds (GSPs, Vizslas) that hunt their dogs as well as are conformation show dogs, they are very much against any proposed ban. When hunting the tails can be damaged and if so, in an adult, they do not heal well and are usually amputated. I do not have first hand knowledge about this, just what I have been told by MANY well respected people in their breeds. I do wonder how the Pointer, with a full tail, does so well. I have seen many GSP puppies thrive after being docked without issues. It is much easier healing than watching puppies heal from cropping.

I will not raise a breed that would be cropped or docked myself as I know that dew claw removal is enough for me. I do not do it myself, the pups all go to the vet for this, but I follow my breed standard and I have seen a dog severely injured when one was caught in a chain and was ripped.

Coming from a breed with “happy tail,” I can tell you that tail injuries DO heal.

I think this once more comes down to the question of whether it’s ok to injure all to “prevent” injuries to the few. And it is few; tail injuries are tracked and those requiring intervention are statistically rare.

And once more, if tails are such a liability why are we not docking setters and chessies and pointing labs?

Thank you for writing this, J! Miss EllieMae tends to bang her tail on quite a LOT of stuff and I’m always half-amused and half-terrified (of injury) when I hear those loud thunks. The WeimLabX we used to dogsit always had a sore or two on his tail from thwapping it against stuff, and it drove his people a little nuts so I’ve always wondered about tail-cropping pros/cons. As someone who had a cat declawed over 20 years ago (and regretted it every day afterward), I’m in agreement with you about keeping dogs (and cats) as close to their natural state as possible, and just grooming them as necessary for everyone’s health & peace of mind.

I do think a lot of the arguments against docking can also be used as a basis for supporting a change in the breed standards of the brachyocephalic breeds… but I know that’s a big ol’ can of worms and you don’t agree with me 😉 Just pointing out how this can be as slippery a slope as the argument that cropping & docking are done due to personal aesthetic preference.

I really enjoyed reading your article — a friend posted it on Facebook. So much of your information about the mutilation of dogs echoes information about mutilation of baby humans, in the form of circumcisions in boys and girls — right down to the argument that babies nurse and go to sleep afterward.

I am not a dog owner or breeder, but thank you for your thoughtful and articulate article.

I rally enjoyed this article…… In The Netherlands (and a large part of Europe) docking/cropping is illegal and showing a docked/cropped dog formally is not possible (unless you have a vets-note, stating it was for medical purposes…..but this is very rare).
Tbh I like the docked look in some breeds, but knowingly harming a dog, just for esthetics goes against all my principles, same goes for de-clawing a cat….I mean come on, they evolved with certain body parts intact for a reason. The silly arguments given that it’s to prevent injuries or that a dog can’t carry the weight of it’s own tail in laughable.
I hope that your country also inforces a ban, in my point of view this is animal cruelty……..

If the ACK would agree to open the books for some breeds then breeding for naturally short tails would be possible thus negating docking. But that would entail some actual logic on their part. (and we also know a few breeds could use a larger gene pool to help out with erradicating specific health defects, but I digress)

I had to listen to a litter of yorkies be docked just the other day. We have them take the mother OFF the premises because of their crying. And we use anestetic. Yeah sure it doesn’t hurt.

As a trainer with a heavy interest in dog behavior I think leaving tails and ears alone better helps them communicate with their body. Sure not having tails or standing their ears up doesn’t mean they can’t communicate at all, I just think it changes it to a degree. Plus having a tail for the other dog (and their people) to see can be very helpful. So why mess with it?

Of course I am also for letting brachycephelic breeds have more nose as well. Kinda like they looked when they were developed in the first place. We have morphed some of them way to extreme.

I tried to post this earlier, but it must have not worked (or it was moderated out for whatever reason), but just so I can put in a differing opinion:

Very interesting viewpoints. I tend to agree with the poster in the cropping thread (“k.b.,” I believe he called himself?) about legislating this. It should be a personal choice as to what you want done with your dog. California has legislation out there for a mandatory spay/neuter law and no one seems to realize that dogs can live just fine with their reproductive organs…it’s just that most people don’t have the level of responsibility to let them do for for many and various reasons. I have never met a docked/cropped dog that was distressed from having no tail, just as I have never met a (indoor-only!) declawed cat that was depressed because it couldn’t scratch the couch. The government is not living with my dog…I am. The choices I make for my dog reflect on the quality of care I give it; certainly outward appearances are regarded as ‘first impression’ kind of things, but surely more people are focused on general health and vitality then “She has a docked/cropped dog, how utterly CRUEL she must be to have something like that.” I’m more apt to turn in someone with a walking skeleton on a leash than someone walking a fit, healthy, happy docked/cropped dog. Same instance with such things as brachycephalic or achondroplastic breeds: with things like these, I do wish more emphasis would be placed on health, but I am not going to blow the whistle on their owners just because they choose to perpetuate a breed characteristic that plainly causes suffering amongst some dogs. Docking and cropping do not cause such suffering to the extent a lack of muzzle does.

And what about dogs who came that way for one reason or another? Are their owners to be penalized because of someone else’s views? We all agree that millions of dogs out there need homes; does it say more that you rescued a dog, or does it put a black mark on you when you rescue a ‘MUTILATED’ dog, when it appears that you WANTED one like that? Simply put, are foster children more deserving of adoption than crack babies?

Legislation to ban docking and cropping is, the way I see it, a bunch of nannies sticking their nose where it doesn’t belong. Animal laws vary widely, from banning training tools for apparent “cruelty” to banning things such as this, to breed bans and the mandatory speutering law currently under review. There is simpy no standard on paper to which we can be held when it comes to animal care: what is abuse to one person (say, the appearance of a prong collar on my dog), is clearly quite the opposite to others. If someone wants an uncut dog, by all means do not get anything done (strangely, the people who are against cosmetic mutilation have nothing wrong with mutilating or removing reproductive organs either, but I digress), but don’t go telling me how you think I should like my dogs. It’s freedom of choice, or what little of it I have left, and that’s part of what makes this such a great country.

Well, first, you’re definitely barking up the wrong tree (pun intended) if you think I’m blindly pro-spay/neuter. I’ve written at length (I’m sure some would say ad nauseam) on the topic. I’ll tell you right now that I don’t think males should be neutered as a default. Bitches not being bred DO need to be spayed once they are full grown, though; it is legitimately risky to keep them intact if you’re not going to breed them.

I’ve provided a whole bunch of data about the fact that docked tails continue to hurt; if you want to say that they don’t, the burden of proof is now on you. You’d also need to provide some proof that brachycephalic dogs with no health issues are suffering.

Animal laws DO vary widely, as do all laws. Saying that some are stupid doesn’t mean that all are.

Oh, and your comment post was delayed because WordPress put it in the spam folder. I don’t moderate except for people who don’t play nicely with others.

Thanks for sharing the undocked Corgi site. We have a Corgi/Aussie mix and the breeder (long story) we got him from docked his tail. I am not sure why, he is a mutt. However, at least once a week I think, I wish he had a tail. Glad to see that someone out there breeds Pembrokes with tails. Makes me happy.